


Kuuvalge öö | Moonlit night

by V6ilill



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Brainwashing, Dark, Doublethink, Estonian Language & Culture, Estonian Martin Callahan, Gen, Loss Of Culture, Loss of Identity, One Shot, Post-Game(s), Tragedy, bilingual fic, deaths of original characters mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29197839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V6ilill/pseuds/V6ilill
Summary: There is one language in Halcyon.Martin Callahan knows that. And yet, he cannot help but remember- cannot help but remember, for he is the last one left.
Relationships: Martin Callahan & Original Characters





	Kuuvalge öö | Moonlit night

**Author's Note:**

> translations at the end. tell me if i forgot something

When Martin Callahan hears the Earth is gone, he is standing at his stall, letting the helmet smile placidly at passersby. Few people want to buy what he has to offer. Fewer still have the means. The dissidents have truly exceeded themselves, he thinks. Pole midagi, for the companies will soon restore the natural order of the universe.

Then- reklaam katkeb. A broadcast. The Earth is gone. Has been gone, for a few years now. Martin tunes it out and focuses on polishing the counter. The companies will take care of that too. A lowly merchant should not concern himself so with the providence of higher-ups. Clearly whatever happened there, nii kaugel, is no danger to Halcyon.

That evening, while Martin is doing inventory on his wares, watching the still unreplenished supplies take up less and less space, he understands. The pen stills in his hand. The ancestral homeland of his people is gone. Martin blinks, kehitades õlgu. He has never been there, he could not even find it on a map. He has never seen a map of Earth in his life. It wasn’t an important enough thing to be taught at school, and now it would never be important.

Martin returns to counting crates, but his mind roams elsewhere. He wonders whether any Estonians settled in the other colonies. If not, then, well . . .

Martin might be the last.

Or one of the last, in any case. He shuts down the dataslate and prays to the Architect, the Holdings Board and Spacer’s Choice. How blessed he is, to serve such a glorious cause! How blessed he is, to live when his people do not! How blessed he is, to know that his kind is a dying breed! How blessed he is, to never hear a word of his emakeel again . . .

Kui järele mõelda, he has been the last for awhile, the last of Halcyon. All his family were dead. Sometimes, he still woke screaming - ema, ema, kas sa tuled? Mis sinuga juhtus?! - before he’d remember no one would answer. The Plague, Spacer’s Choice said, and their word was true even if the world disagreed - but an insidious part of his mind says nälg, nälg see oli nälg, varsti jätavad nad ka sind maha - in a voice strangely reminiscent of vanaisa, before he’d also died of the Plague. Martin would have always been the last Estonian of Halcyon, for no matter what fantasies his treacherous mind conjures - of little children, a boy and girl, parroting his words back to him, whom he could teach to sing something else than corporate jingles - he would never dare disrespect his company so. There wouldn’t have been a point anyway.

It had never occurred to Martin that he might be the last everywhere else too.

He starts humming to himself - mu isamaa on kaunis maa, see kaugel tähistaeva all - then he stops. He cannot remember the words. He taps out the rhythm - eight syllables on a verse, regivärss - but nothing comes of it.

He wonders what it means, to be Estonian. He wonders if he is truly one of them, if he forgets so easily. He has the blood, certainly, from his vanavanemad - that should be enough. He has the language, though disuse has made it clumsy. What else is there? Well, he knows how to sing regilaul, even if he’s not a terribly good singer. Even if he has no one to sing it with. He’s heard his people valued forests, nature, kept holy trees. Martin doesn’t know why anyone would venerate something so vile and dangerous. He much prefers his clean space station bunk, liberally sprayed with Spacer’s Not-Knockoff Disinfectant and Auntie-septic.

Martin’s growling stomach interrupts the thoughts, but he has nothing to quench it with. Woe to him, who has not sold anything in two days! It’s all his fault. Spacer’s Choice cannot feed such a useless employee. They would never abandon him.

He wonders if any of his own belongings could be sold. Then he remembers. There is a box, all the belongings his vanaema had insisted he take with him. What Spacer’s Choice would take from her was not the same they’d take from him. He reaches for it, dragging it from under the bed, shoves off the lid.

Inside are baubles. Sõled. Martin weighs the word in his throat. He could not translate it. He turns the clothing pins in his hands, watching light glint off. His grandparents had squirreled away metal for those useless baubles they had never worn. Such luxury would have been unseemly on a worker. They had taught all their children to make them, polished the pins until they looked like silver - and Martin could not make more. The pins would have been profitable at a time clean water didn’t cost lives. But they were not intended for profit, merely to further an obsolete, useless craft to appease the ghosts of long-forgotten ancestors. They tethered Martin’s family to a homeland that no longer exists, a past long forgotten, a people who have died.

Perhaps it is for the better that the Põldojad had not taught Martin anything substantial. Less dead tradition for him to scrub away, less waste to dispose of. Martin gathers the box, adding it to his shop inventory.

That night, he dreams of places he’s only seen pictures of, roamed by people he’d never met. They call out to him, but he cannot understand them. They give him something, but he cannot see its value. And when he wakes, he forgets he’d seen anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Pole midagi - no matter  
> reklaam katkeb - the ad stops  
> nii kaugel - so far  
> kehitades õlgu - (while) shrugging (his/her/its/their) shoulders  
> emakeel - mother tongue  
> Kui järele mõelda - if one thinks it through  
> ema, ema, kas sa tuled? Mis sinuga juhtus?! - mother, mother will you come/are you coming? What happened to you?!  
> nälg, nälg see oli nälg, varsti jätavad nad ka sind maha - hunger, hunger, it was hunger, they will soon abandon you as well  
> vanaisa - grandfather  
> mu isamaa on kaunis maa, see kaugel tähistaeva all - my fatherland is a beautiful land, it is far behind the starry sky  
> regivärss - old Estonian form of singing, composed of eight syllables per verse, alternating between long and short. doesn't rhyme  
> vanavanemad - grandparents  
> regilaul - a song composed of regivärss, usually sung by a singer and a choir that repeats the singer's lines  
> Sõled - brooches  
> Põldojad - lit. field streams, the most stereotypically Estonian last name I could think to give Martin's grandparents (singular form Põldoja)


End file.
